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The Art Of




Distortia

By Graeme Daly

Travelogue

As you cross the threshold and crawl underneath the tarantula legs of dead tree roots your eyes focus on the mesmerising vastness of
Distortia, city of movement. Distortia is a city that is always manifesting into something completley dierent. Youre not quite sure what
it is your looking at as your eyes start to adjust by looking for familiarity, the shapes of the city shift drastically and conform to
something radically dierent.

A rubiks cube of shapes, points, roofs, arches, textures, and colours contort chronologically together synchronising in complex new
buildings to form a new city, you look on in utter astonishment, looking from your peripheral vision shows a dierent city. The buildings
are coloured dierent from one another with deep reds, seafoam green, blue velvet and bright yellows being prevalent, the buildings have
textures that resemble plastic, polka dots and galvanised steel, they are jagged, distorted and dangerous and one wonders how the citizens
of Distortia are able to withstand such constant change.

The buildings are not on one level and instead are stacked on top of each other as you wonder how do you get to the above buildings the
city shifts and reveals multiple staircases that meander and weave around the citys core. The locals say that the rich live higher up in the
clouds of Distortia and look down on the ground level dwellers as the poor live on street level. As you make your way forward looking in a
dierent more close up perspective the monstrous buildings start to make more sense.. until they start to manifest into something dierent
again which leaves you baed and unable to understand the workings of city

Distortia doesnt follow the laws of physics and gravity as the roads climb and wrap around the buildings like a vine trying to nd
sunlight as they seem to burrow in between shapes of buldings as if to make a tunnel through them however you are not certain as the
many perspectives of buildings cloud your vision and you cannot tell when one road starts and another ends.

The vegetation of Distortia is in vast contrast to the jagged geometrical shapes of the buildings as they are soft and oozy and seem to dissolve
and dribble into liquid colours so vivid they look like petrol bleaching into water. You wonder if you are hallucinating as the colours of the
trees ow and gurgle into one another as you feel yourself falling into a hazy meditative state as you gaze at the colours rippling into one
another. The trees and mountains of Distortia follow as far as the eye can see to the horizon line behind the cityscape and you wonder if its all
just a mirage and if your eyes are playing tricks on you as the earth towards the horizon seems to pulsate with colour. As you gaze into the
distance past the trees and cityscape you notice that the landscape seems to concave in on itself, the multitude of colours from the ground bend
and bleed into a labyrinth of blackness and you wonder what is down there? Why is it there? in a city so full of vibrant colours and more
importantly if there is a way out. The locals say that it happens often that the residents begin to question everything and many forget what is
real and what isnt real as living in a city of constant motion drives many over the edge and when it does happen they escape their unhinged
mental state by diving into the plume of black where the Kaleidoscopic colours stop and the suocating darkness smothers.

The people of Distortia are as strange and unfamiliar as the city itself. They oat around going from one destination to the next and their
faces seem to match the mash up of perspectives of the city, You look at a civilian from the corner of your eye and notice a face set in prole
but when you look straight on you see the familiar face is a twisted uncanny fusion of perspectives of eyes noses and mouths, they have an
abundance of lines and shapes which makes up their confusing faces. The citizens of Distortia do however have the pleasure of not conforming
to the same route of travel every day as the city gives them new ways to travel which makes it feel like a new adventure each time however
many seem to relinquish this way of life and loath those that can live with routine. The lower part of Distortia has a massive array of shops
that oer many amenities to the civilians with many being bric a brac shops that oer many hand made trinkets such as crystals, lamps,
sculptures and pottery. As the sun sets in you notice the increments of the city changing its form begins to slow to a halt as the people begin to
return to their homes and wind down for the day. The city slots into place and the hierarchys buildings are revealed. The Hierarchys
buildings are mammoth in size and look like two giant pincers, which apparently dont move like the accompanying buildings for the
civilians. The hierarchys building is never on show during the day as the movement of the city around it disguises it from the viewer like a
bomb shelter.

Fluorescent glow in the dark kites light up the night sky of and feel like they are trying to make a up a city themselves as they are in a multitude
of shapes and colours that match the structure of the cityscape during the daytime as they glide through the night sky.

Distortia is a psychedelic trip for the traveller as the many colours and shapes are surreal and otherworldly and many would assume that it is a
safe haven of elation but the many pedestrians of Distortia seem like they are going through the paces and are lost in a haze of the colours that
illuminate them. Many believe that the Hierarchys buildings hold the secret to the Citys constant movements and that many have lost their lives
trying to gure it out

Influence Map

Thumbnails

Thumbnails

Thumbnails

Progression
A"er the feedback from my rst OGR my ideas for my designs
radically changed. I was trying to bridge the gap between
Braques Cubism and Fauvism and trying to implement both
art designs in my city was proving tough so I decided to scrap
the idea of having both and focus more on Braques most
famous work, which was Cubism. I also really started to think
conceptually about my designs as I was trying to turn
Braques painFngs into a city which is not what is asked in the
brief, I had to think of Braques principals for his painFngs
and apply these to a city as if Braque himself was tasked to
design it. I started to research a lot of dierent real world
architecture such as Persian, soviet, and Bruetalist
architecture which started to ourish ideas of plans of the
city and this inspired me to look into the details such as
window designs and door designs and also the colour pallete.
I knew that I wanted my city to have a monument and
looking at one of Braques painFngs which is a cubist painFng
of ship sails I thought that I could make a monument
reecFng the sails and this reminded me of my home city in
Eyre square County Galway where a monument is in the
center of the town which resembles the sails of the Galway
Hooker tradiFonal shing boats that come into Galway bay
every year.

Braques PainFng

Galway Hooker Monument

Rough Sketch of scene

UPDATED influence map

Key ASSETS

Key ASSETS

Initial Concept art

Scene breakdown

Concept Art Colour


corrections

revised coNCEP ART

I was given some great advice to take my concept art to the next level and that was to add more moon blue glow rim
lighFng on areas that would suit and Im glad I was given this advice because it was the missing part to make it feel
nished

UV MAPS, TEXTURES, 3D
version

UV map

Texture

3D

3D PIPELINE

Wireframe Shaded UV Grid Texture LighFng

The Gallery

Bar & Restraint

The Jazz club

3D PIPELINE of whole scene

Wireframe Shaded Ambient Occlusion

UV Grid Texture & LighFng

Matte Painting

Final Scene

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